Real Housewife of Smyrna. Proudly representing Ward 3 on the Smyrna City Council since 2007.

November 10, 2015

Old Cities, New Cities, And One Non-City Ranked on Best-Of Lists

There are lots of things that make a community a city, but nothing (other than a yes vote – sorry, LaVista Hills!) legitimizes a city like making a best-of list on the internet.

By this metric, the nascent City of Tucker is now really a city. Two lists released last week by WalletHub and 24/7 Wall Street include several Georgia cities ranked by virtue of their affordability, economic health, education and health, and quality of life.

Of the 1,268 cities with a population between 25,000 and 100,000 residents on the WalletHub list, Georgia’s representatives include:

Statesboro (1083; dead last in the highest percentage of residents below the poverty level)

Warner Robins (1100)

Gainesville (1119)

Rome (1161)

Sandy Springs (1166; third from the bottom in income growth, but their median income is pretty good, so interpret that as you will)

LaGrange (1172)

Dalton (1173)

Valdosta (1182)

Macon (1220)

Albany (1225)

East Point (1242)

On the 24/7 Wall Street list, which only ranked cities with a population of more than 60,000 residents, Johns Creek received an overall score of 95.4 out of 100. The site notes that, “While Georgia generally fares worse than most states in many social and economic measures, Johns Creek residents benefit from high incomes, low poverty, high levels of education, and plenty of amenities.”

The methodology used in each set of rankings is key to contextualizing the lists, which may come as a relief to Sandy Springs when they find themselves ranked below Mableton, which is not actually a city (yet).

2 comments

Realize that the Tucker being referenced in this list is the current boundaries of Tucker, known as its zip code population and area. The new city of Tucker is mostly a land grab from Stone Mountain and will be controlled by the Smoke Rise Republicans, not the good people who live in Tucker and never wanted to take on the enormous burden of providing its own services when they were (mostly) satisfied with their county services and what they pay for them. And I say this because I live here and watched how the community was tricked, lied to and shut out of the process. Those speaking for the “city of Tucker” didn’t live here or were actually people who wanted to see Tucker fail so they could be annexed into Lakeside / Lavista Hills. The Millar changes to the map should be evident exactly which streets were already working with his camp and those in nearby homes (the original Tucker 2014 board) were conveniently across the street, right in line to be the first ones annexed once they gave away most of Tucker’s commercial and made the community look just as bad as the other city advocates around them.